Long after Caleb fell asleep, Sawyer lay awake, staring over his bare shoulder at the wall as anxious thoughts rattled around in her head.

Home.

Sawyer took a deep, shuddering breath, fingers flexing on Caleb's rock-hard bicep. Frustrated and exhausted, she rolled out of bed, grabbed her underwear and shirt, and glanced down at Caleb. The werewolf slept on, a contented smile on his face.

I wish I felt as confident as you are, she thought sadly as she made her way over to the couch. Perhaps a change of scenery (however small) would calm her down.

As she sat on the dilapidated couch, a dark shadow on the floor caught her eye. Sawyer reached down and drew her purse towards her by the straps. The motion caused her cell phone to slide free and she picked it up.

The screen lit up as Sawyer touched it, showing the time and a stock photo of daffodils. She stared blearily at the screen, running her thumbs up and down the sides of the phone. The motion somehow unlocked the cheap device; a green phone icon loomed large in the upper left-hand corner, drawing her attention like a beacon.

Nearly drunk with fatigue, Sawyer's finger hovered over the icon. Should I ...? Before she could talk herself out of it, she opened the app and scrolled through her contacts. There weren't many: the bar, Harvey's personal number, a couple of restaurants, and her parents. Next to "Mom" and "Dad" were little asterisks, reminding her that she'd blocked their numbers.

This wasn't her original cell phone—Sawyer had left that in her room back home—but she'd memorized her parents' numbers and called them once a year to assure them she was still alive. Then she promptly blocked their numbers until the next time.

Home.

Selecting her mother's number, she unblocked it and called. Clutching at her shirt, Sawyer rocked back and forth on the couch as it rang, and rang ... and ...

"Sawyer?" It was her mom, voice rough with sleep.

Immediately, Sawyer began to silently cry, tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Sawyer? Baby, are you there?"

"I'm here, Mom," she choked out.

In the background, Sawyer could hear her father asking who it was at this hour. Mom hushed him and swiftly asked, "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

Gulping, Sawyer nodded. "I'm fine, Mom."

Her mother's sigh of relief was audible, but her tone was still frantic. "Did something happen? Do you need us?"

Sawyer caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Caleb sat down next to her in his boxer shorts and put an arm around her shoulder. "I—I—I want to come home, Mommy."

This caused her mother to promptly burst into tears. Immediately, Sawyer was awash with guilt. Her fingers ached as they gripped her shirt. Quietly asking Mom for the phone, her father said, "What's your address?"

"1016 Bernard Street—Harvey's Bar. I—I live above it."

"Give us a few minutes to get dressed. We'll be there as soon as possible."

Sawyer sagged against Caleb; he kissed the top of her head and rubbed her back. "N-no," she stammered. They were going to come out in the middle of the night to get her? After all she'd put them through? "You don't have to come now. Caleb—Caleb's with me."

"Caleb?" Her father sounded surprised. "Can I talk to him, kiddo?"

Nodding, she passed the phone to Caleb. "My dad," she mouthed, using the opportunity to wipe her eyes with her T-shirt.

"Hello, Mr Bloodmoon," Caleb said. He nodded, replying occasionally with "mm-hmm" and "no", before he said, "I'll do that. Here she is, sir," and gave Sawyer back her phone.

"What time do you want us there?" Dad asked as soon as Sawyer announced herself.

Time? What time was it now? She glanced at the phone's display. "Uh ... ten?" Hopefully, she could get some sleep between now and then.

"Ten it is. Is there a parking lot nearby?"

"There's a community lot across the street. You can't miss it."

Dad took a deep breath, then loosed it. "We'll see you in a few hours, kiddo. I love you."

"I love you too, Daddy," she whispered. After her father disconnected, Sawyer slowly put the phone down and turned to look at Caleb. "What did he say to you?" she asked as he gently wiped tears from her cheeks.

"He wanted to make sure that you were really okay—and if my grandfather knew that I was here."

"Does he?" she asked with rising alarm.

Caleb shook his head and pulled her close. "No. He grilled me for a while, but he eventually gave up. I think he just forgot you existed."

"Because faeries are beneath werewolves," she muttered, looking down at her knees. She'd heard that a lot in school.

Caleb sighed heavily. "Yes."

Leaning her head on his broad chest, Sawyer listened to his strong heartbeat. "Caleb ..."

"Yes?"

"I'm tired." Tired of running, tired of fighting, tired of being alone.

Caleb nodded. "I know," he murmured. Getting to his feet, he extended his hand toward Sawyer. "Let's try and get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay," she replied, interlocking their fingers.

As she lay down on the mattress, wrapped in Caleb's arms, Sawyer finally fell asleep.

------------

Sawyer's parents—and Lee—arrived promptly at ten; she spotted them from her living room window standing in front of the municipal lot.

Oh, goddess, this is it, she thought as she directed them to the back stairs.

"Good luck," Caleb told her as she went to greet them.

Heart hammering in her chest, Sawyer walked down the hallway and opened the door. "H-hi," she stammered as they got to the top.

Veronica Emberstar Bloodmoon, Sawyer's mother, nearly threw her husband and son over the railing in her haste to embrace her daughter.

"Oof! Mom!" Sawyer gasped as the tall, athletic blonde beta female fairly crushed her in a bear hug.

"Ronnie, it's not safe out here," her father said, gently trying to separate the two. "Let's get inside, then you can squeeze her like a push-pop."

Mom dropped her grip around Sawyer's torso, but her hands immediately went up to cup the faerie's face. "Oh, baby, baby—you're so thin." Tears began to well in her mother's eyes. "It all can be fixed. It can all be fixed," she muttered, more to herself than to Sawyer.

Could it be fixed? Those missing five years? Swallowing hard, Sawyer nodded. "Let's, uh, go to my apartment, shall we?"

The floorboards creaked as two large beta males maneuvered their bulk through the tight hall. One of the college boys opened his door, spotted them walking towards him, and promptly disappeared back into his apartment.

Caleb rose from the couch as Sawyer let her family into the apartment. Their shocked expressions were somewhat easier to stomach than Caleb's as they each took a turn looking around her living area.

"We got the wrong-sized truck," Lee muttered, reaching up to grab a pot of wildflowers off of Sawyer's fridge. He poked a petal and turned it around to inspect the chipped pottery.

Wrong-sized truck? What did that mean? Sawyer turned to her mother, but she wasn't paying any attention.

"Hush," Mom admonished Lee, going up to hug Caleb. "Thank you for staying with her," she told him, gripping his arm appreciatively.

"Of course," Caleb replied, glancing over at where Sawyer loitered uncomfortably in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself.

There were so many people in the apartment now, making her acutely aware of how incredibly small it really was.

"We missed you, kiddo," her father said, putting an arm around Sawyer's shoulders and drawing her towards him. Alan Bloodmoon was as tall as Caleb and Lee, but not quite as broad. A dark pair of sunglasses were perched atop his short, thick black hair. As he reached up to adjust the glasses, his dark blue shirt sleeve lifted up to reveal the bottom of a Navy tattoo on his bicep.

"I missed you, too, Dad," Sawyer whispered, swallowing back the tears that seemed to flow too easily these past few days. She'd cried so much lately, that she was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with her.

Other than being a faerie, of course.

Clearing his throat more forcefully than was necessary, Dad looked around the room. "Where do you want to start first?"

Sawyer blinked. "Start where?"

"You said that you wanted to come home, Sawyer," Dad said with a frown, confusion etched across his face. "So we rented a truck."

Sawyer took a small step back. "Pack? Now? But I have a lease—and a job." There were so many fines attached to breaking a lease early—weren't there? She didn't have the money to cover any of that.

"I've gotten people out of tighter contracts than a lease," her father told Sawyer with a little wink. "Give me the name of your landlord—and your employer. I'll have this sorted out in no time."

Sawyer stared at him. "But ... I ..."

The amusement faded from Dad's eyes and he grew serious. "What is it, kiddo?"

How could she possibly put the swirl of emotions teeming inside of her into words? "You don't have to do that," she managed to tell him. Parents didn't clean up their adult children's messes. That was the whole point of teaching them how to be responsible—right?

Mom put off her study of a stain on the couch. "Yes, we do," she said, walking over to wrap her arms around her daughter.

"After all the trouble I caused?" Sawyer cried, staring up at her parents.

"You're our daughter," Mom told her firmly, squeezing her shoulders. "It's no trouble at all!"

Sawyer opened her mouth, but her mother beat her to it. "Sawyer, baby, look." She reached down and took Sawyer's hands, holding them tight. Staring into her daughter's eyes, she said, "When your father and I made the decision to adopt you, we knew that there were going to be challenges. But we didn't care. Maybe we were being selfish, but after the agency showed us your picture—you know the one? Where you had your hair in those adorable little pigtails?"

Despite herself, Sawyer smiled. She knew the exact one her mother was referring to.

"Well," her mother sighed, "how could we say no? We wanted you so much that we told ourselves we would face any obstacle that came our way."

"And that includes getting you out of contracts," her father added with a little grin.

Sawyer nodded, gently pulling her hands out of her mother's grip to knuckle the tears away. "Okay," she whispered. There were days growing up that she had wished she had been born a werewolf and not a faerie. But on this day, she was glad that her parents chose her. "Okay."

Mom smiled and gave her a quick hug. "Good! Now—boys!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands at Lee and Caleb. The two werewolves jolted to attention, shooting startled looks at each other. "We'll take the couch out first, then the mattress ..."

"It's all junk ..." Sawyer began, but her mother pointedly ignored her. Shaking her head, Sawyer watched as Mom directed Caleb and Lee to the couch, spouting instructions on how to get it out the door.

"We'll sort all of that out later," Dad said, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Now, what are those numbers?"